Descanso Garden Club

Seasonal Tasks for the Descanso Gardener
Information provided by master gardener, Pam J.

February Gardening Tasks

• Don't be fooled by our occasional weeks of false spring. There will be more cold weather! Be prepared to protect new plantings when we have that late February cold snap!
• Prune your roses and fruit trees if you didn't do it last month.
• Transplant mail order perennials into larger containers when they arrive and hold them in the cold frame until sturdy root growth develops.
• Plant new summer-blooming bulbs. Glads, Lilies, Dutch Iris, Iris reticulata, Crinum, Ranuncula all do well here. Glads may need to be lifted and stored in fall or treated as annuals.
• Plant bare root roses and fruit trees. Soak the roots overnight before planting.
• Start sweet peas, garden peas, spinach and lettuce to avoid summer heat.
• Plant cane berries,strawberries and asparagus.
• Feed flowering trees and shrubs.
  Dig a few holes the size of a shovel handle into the soil around drip line.
• Prune the summer flowering shrubs,
  NOT THE SPRING BLOOMERS! THEY SET THEIR BUDS LAST FALL

JANUARY

• Birds could use a little help this time of year.
  If you don't have a feeder, a piece of carpet or a square of plywood will make a good feeding ground.
• If you have bulb shoots appearing after that week of warm weather, protect the new growth with some compost.
• Now is the time for dormant spray on your fruit trees.
• Save your fireplace ashes for alkaline soil plants such as Lilacs.
• Time to plant those sweet peas!
• Time to start cuttings and seeds for the plant sale!
• Order new roses, perennials and summer-blooming bulbs.